MTIA CONFERENCE REVIEW

I've only attended four MTIA conferences in my lifetime but this last one was, in a word, AMAZING! The speakers were on point with regard to where our two associations need to be going forward and what we need to know to manage or work for successful businesses, regardless of their size. In fact, the thought I constantly had running through my head was, "Why aren't ALL MT business owners here -- regardless of their size?" If business owners, I dare say especially small ones, are not up-to-date on all of the new HIPAA regulations alone, I fear they could be in deep trouble beginning in January of 2010. Gear-up should be in progress by August 2009, according to Scott Edelstein, Esq., the speaker for this presentation.

The SRT Summit was an open discussion of how everyone, documentation professionals included, need to prepare for increased use of speech recognition technology and the Q/A Summit began an in depth discussion for defining quality. The ultimate goal of this cross section of professionals will be to produce a Q/A document suitable for all users, MTSO, HIM directors, and documentation professionals regardless of whether "traditional" transcription is used or back-end SRT editing is utilized. Stay tuned for updates from both of these groups.

More news next week. . . .